Quitting Task Forces.

I hate it. I hate when someone drops a Task Force. If you dont have time, don't join. Sure, real life can happen. But we all know people drop for things besides emergencies.

So I feel really bad. I have dropped from two Synapse's in a row, one Monday night, one Tuesday night. Monday night I joined one, not realizing what time it was. I stayed on until 12:30 am, and just couldn't anymore. I work, workout, etc. It was two hours past my preferred bedtime and we had five missions to go. Last night I joined one at about 9:15. i22, and I'm jumping onto a Synapse lol. I was clear at the outset, I did not have 3 hours, I had two max. At 10:45 we had completed five missions. The team makeup was one unbalanced Brute, TW/Invul. His/her end bar was nonexistent, i kept dropping Blues on him for an hour and it seemed to have no effect. The other 6 were 5 controllers and a dominator. I was Blasting. To make it worse there was very little herding/efficiency. Anytime I got a couple purps I would jump in and herd/blap, even though I am specifically built for range.

the question. What is the polite way to drop from a TF? Is there one? Tuesday night I was still talking to them about team make up and the projected 3 hour time I suspected based on my sewer runs on all dom/troller teams (i22...) and the leader hit start. He was sure we could do it in 1:30. It really irks me, it's a point of pride I finish all my TFs, no matter what. I can't remember the last time I did not finish one. Two in a row is horrific. Any thoughts?

If by you dropping there is no possible way to complete the Trial (IE: the four person simul click and #4 drops), then yes you need to be spanked. Otherwise stay as long as you can, but warn that you may not be able to go all the way.

If you had told the team up front, during the recruiting phase, that you had 3 hours max and they were ok with it, then at 3 hours, I'd have no problems with you leaving. Personally, I'd give a warning at -1 hour to quitting time and -30 mins to quitting time to give the team reminders and nudges to speed things up. But if that fails and the time approaches, then I'd announce that the next mission would be my last. When that's done, I'll wish them good luck and leave.

As for your example with Synapse, it averages 2.5 hours to do even if you stay for taking down Babbage. For 3+ hours, the team must have been full of newbies.

I think that players vary on how they look at someone quitting a task force.

I used to think it was just unthinkable to leave a tf before it completed. I have done enough tfs to know how long it should "normally" take. However, one version of normal is different from another.

I am used to posi 1 and 2 taking less than a half hour each. However, team composition and player attitude don't always make for that short of a time. Sometimes you have lower level toons instead of exemped level 50's, and trust me, those slots make a big difference!

I think the best way to avoid having to quit a tf is to
1. Look at the team composition. For example: A team with a kin is going to move faster. A team with no buffs is going to faceplant, on average, more than otherwise.

2. Communication. Always ask if it's a speed run or fight through, or a kill all. Explain your time constraints, if any.

3. Rate your teammates play -- then make comments in the add/edit notes section. Mention whether they played fast, slow, lots of afk time, whatever the case may be. Jot down the tf and the date.
I say this so that next time you do a tf, if you run across that player, you'll have some knowledge (more than previously) about what you're getting into.



Nowadays, it's really not as big of a deal as it used to be. With IOs, recharges are faster, regen rates are higher. All said it done, the content is simply easier than it used to be. So, when someone quits nowadays, it really isn't that big of a deal. There are some teams that might particularly miss a tank, or a debuffer, but since task forces generally don't have time limits, a team can choose to log until that person that had to leave came back. (not everyone comes back when they're supposed to either. Real life happens)

Too tired to write anymore, but in summary, I wouldn't sweat it.
Just don't make it a habit.

I think what shocked me was I have been doing this TF at 1:30 pretty regular. I'm not joking, although looking back it seems like a string of miracles. Mondays was 2 hours in and not even at Bertha yet. Tuesdays was over an hour in to complete 4 missions plus the clock hunt. Last night I led, and completed one. 2 of the team was personal friends, 5 PUG. 2:30. We would have been done at 2:20, but somebody dropped in in the last mission. We waited 10 min to see if they would log back on.

This is a TF I tend to do as soon as possible, but these times just seem horrid long to me now. Not sure what has changed.

Anyways, thanks for the insights.

I think I saw your Synapse forming last night and I didn't join, it was too late for me to start and anyway I did one Tuesday in which someone quit (not you -- ours still finished just fine in less than 2 hours). I was kind of annoyed at that one too, not only did the guy quit with little notice (Got to go, bye!), not only did he quit right after hiking all the way out to the Bertha mission in Boomtown (really? You came all the way out there and you can't finish a very short mission?), not only did he quit when we were pretty much steamrolling the entire TF, but he didn't actually log off or even switch characters -- we saw him standing around in Steel Canyon twenty minutes later.

Another person with 1 star by their name, heh. ^_^

I've done Synapse twice in the last week and both in less than 2 hours, 1 hour 35 minutes and 1 hour 55 minutes I think. But it's one of those TFs that can drag on forever with a bad team. I'm very reluctant to join a PuG Synapse or Shard TF, or to even join one with friends if it's starting later in the evening. The Tuesday one started right after I got home, so I could have stayed for 3+ hours if really necessary.

I apologize for going somewhat off topic...


Can you continue on with TF's such as Sister Psyche's and Numina's if all the other team members quit as soon as it begins?

This can be annoying especially when it affects the outcome of the TF. Lose your only Tank/Brute on an STF and you either scramble like crazy battling Recluse on the final mission or fail.. I have been on STFs that succeeded without one but it is a LOT easier with aggro control. Lose the ONLY character you have with holds on a Lady Grey and the Hamidon mission is a nightmare.. again I was on a team where this happened but we managed to succeed but it took a LOT ot time, a lot of deaths and a few trips back to repurchase inspirations. Now admitedly the leader that put that team together was putting a LOT of faith in one players ability to hold but when that player quit .. we all suffered.

Real life happens and if some one has to go then no problem but the ones that always annoyed me were players that did one or two missions and then POOF .. no message about having to go .. just GONE. I have seen this a number of times on MOONFIRE and my immediate reaction was .. he only joined to get vamprii and warwolves for his Atlas Medallion. HEY ... we are doing a TASK FORCE here if all you want to do is badge .. go hunt them solo on Striga.

Of course there is the opposite problem .. I can remember a few TFs where a player announced at the entrance of a mission that something had come up and they'd be AFK. Ok no problem like I said RL happens. Then the mission ends, everyone else heads outside and 10 minutes later we are all still waiting on one team mate to get back. Of course, as stated, real life does tend to not give a crap about your COH mission and what you assumed would take a minute can turn into 10, 20 or ?? Worse case of THIS happening on a team I was on was a Synapse. We had just completed the mission that spawns Babbage and we waited and waited and waited.. apparently because our missing in action member was still inside we never got the Babbage spawn. Thankfully those days are pretty much gone since leaders can and do kick members that diappear with no notice.

Speaking of quitting TF's, has anyone actually quit a TF because you thought it was completed only to realize after clicking that 'Yes' button that it still had one mission to go?

I win the dope-of-the-year award for that one. I was pissed off at the leader of a Sister Psyche (who was being rude and childish, leaving everyone behind to run ahead to fight the bosses). So after what I thought was the last mission I quickly quit the team. Was so embarassed I quickly logged out to hide my shame.

I remember one time on the original Positron TF I joined a team of eight to run it. After about four missions, two of the players either thought it was too hard, or decided to do something else, or... I don't know. Anyway, they quit, but the other six of us soldiered on.

It was going really slowly with a lot of deaths and a few team wipes, as the original Posi TF was apt to do, well, I guess two more players had had enough about an hour and a half into it and they quit. Some of these players made excuses and some didn't, but now we were down to four.

We discussed giving up, but decided not to. At least three of us did because 15 minutes later the fifth player quit. Oddly enough, that seemed to be some sort of tipping point because from then on, the missions went much more quickly and smoothly with fewer deaths and no complete wipes.

Anyway, my point is, it depends on who is quiting the TF - if it's a somebody who doesn't know what they are doing, or is just a bad player, having them quit can actually speed up the TF for everyone else!

Does anybody remember those long weekends where we'd group log out of toons with an agreed relog time because TF's took like 4+ hrs to run?

I don't quit TF unless whole team decide to quit (just can't pass some mission - usually last one of LRSF).
But there is some higher power called ISP that decided few times I should quit. Fortunately I am mostly doing TF with friends, and I could explain to them what happen tomorrow when I got back online.

I did have bad experience once with Sister Psyche, when half of team quit and the rest was fighting +3 (tank, 2 defenders and troller). It took 6 hours but we managed to finish it, we managed to level during it and have only +1 in the last mission (that was before last changes of TF).

Also I have managed to solo last two mission of Moonfire on tank. Team disbanded because leader DC and person that was AFK got star. Few hours later when I logged back in I was still in TF, so decided to get Shivan help and finish it. It wasn't hard at all. I was holding AV agro and Shivan did damage.

Synapse is one of TFs that I don't like at all. I even prefer old Posi to Synapse. It can be done in less then 1:30h, but most of the time it is around 2:30h or more. And all missions are clockworks. By the time TF is finished my head is buzzing from their sounds.

I can honestly say that I don't remember ever quitting a task force that everyone didn't agree to abandon. Not one single time. Belle did once a while back because they didn't tell her ahead of time that it was a speed run, and it was the first time she had ever tried running Dr. Kahn. She begged them for 10 or 15 minutes to slow down so that she could figure out what was going on, and after two or three missions of them ignoring her, she wished them well and left. (Followed by five minutes of obnoxious tells. It was idiotic.)

I always make sure I have plenty of time to finish a task force. I don't base it on how long an "average" player takes, and I sure as hell don't base it on how fast a team does it that is familiar with the task force and goes along at a fair clip. I remember one night waaay back, I worked literally all friggin' night long on a Synapse task force. Seriously, we spent hours after two or three other people bailed on us doggedly determined to take down the Clockwork King, and it was literally daylight outside before we finally agreed that it just couldn't be done. (This was probably in 2005, well before the days of super inspirations, mega IOs, 5000 temp powers, etc.) The first time I did a Dr. Quaterfield task force, we got whittled down to three people and encountered the mission waaay in to the task force where there are four simulclickies. We all logged off and I sent the one guy whose e-mail address I knew a desperate plea to log in the next day at some pre-arranged time. Surprisingly, he did and we finished it--over 24 hours after it started.

I feel for you being tired and probably bit frustrated and/or irate. And I have a day job, too. I hate to admit this, but I've probably actually called in sick a couple of times over the years specifically because I get into these kinds of situations. But that's how I roll. I DO NOT leave task forces. If I ever do, it will probably because either the police or an ambulance is taking me away. Yes, I know that might sounds a bit neurotic. But no one will ever say, "That damn Tony bailed on us!"

In my opinion, there is no "nice" way to leave a task force. There are only bad ways and worse ways, and I almost always one-star and put a comment on any player who does so. If you're going to run up against a hard stop that could even begin to be a factor, just pass it up. There will always be others you can join when you do have time.

I've never done this, but the only exception I would make is if someone makes a point of informing me when asking to join, "I have to leave at X o'clock, and I have no leeway." At that point, if I invite you and at X o'clock you leave, I had fair warning and an opportunity to find someone else to join instead, and that would be my fault, not yours.

I have to agree with you TonyV. Thats what I expect from other players, and thats what I expect from myself. My only excuse is confusion. I have traditionally been a redside player, and over the last 5 months or so I've probably done 5-10 Synapses. They all were quicker than these (or maybe I just wasn't watching the clock), and I specifically remember finishing one in about 1hour 33min, because we grumbled about missing the 1:30 mark. I will budget for 3 hours for future Synapse and not join if I do not have that time.

Seems to be my week for slow task forces. Last night did a Katie Hannon, in 1hour 10min. sigh.

If I have nothing else going on, I rarely quit if ever. But if anything needs to pull me back to reality and out of game, I have zero issues with leaving. There is very little in life that takes a back seat to a video game.

I will admit to being tempted to quit some TFs recently. I have taken to running blueside TFs with my rogue, and most teams have been understanding of the fact that if I have to travel from PI to any zone besides Talos, or even if it's a Board the Transit mission, it's going to take me a while because I can't take any shortcuts.

However, I have had one or two teams stealth and complete multiple missions while I was still traveling. To me, that's a crappy move.

Yeah. It's good to warn people ahead of time, but I don't know why you wouldn't normally stealth the two missions before the last on a Sister Psyche, or that one mission in the middle of a Manticore, or the 2nd mission in a Numina. All of them require 1 thing to be touched, and that's it. The Numi one in particularly is way out in the middle of Crey's Folly, if someone can mission port there and speed through the mission and complete it while half of the team is still zoning into Brickstown (which, btw, is where the third mission happens to be), then I don't know why you wouldn't do that. The mission bonus for clicking the glowy is not something people should cry over missing out on.

On the other hand, I was on a Manticore a couple of weeks ago with SG mates and most everyone wanted experience, so we did a kill-all steamroll on every mission. Took nearly 2 hours, but that's what people wanted. ^_^

I think the part that sucks the most for a rogue is doing shard missions that force you to go back to Founder's Falls or some other hero zone. You might as well just sit in the Shadow Shard and wait for people to come back -- which is what we've had rogues do before. Any shard TF you run is one you want to run as fast as possible. >.>